“How do these ideal neighborhoods as purported by LiveBaltimore.com rank in terms of violence?”
-Charles
I don’t have the time or inclination to challenge every one of their model living communities. I will look at three and then look at their criteria.
Locust Point is white paradise, with Fort McHenry to their back and water on three sides, hoodrats have never penetrated this gentrification success story. The poor whites got taxed out of the area 15 years ago and it’s now paradise, one way in, one way out, no blacks, no secondary schools, etc.
Move in whitey, and enjoy the rarified air.
In 2005 the average individual income in Locust Point was 101K, so bring some change…
Chinquapin Park is not safe for anyone to walk through at night, though you will be safe in your home. The Belvedere Square shopping center is upscale and patronized by yuppies galore. However, the #8 bus line drives out York Road at the best frequency of all lines, with the highest capacity, and with the third highest crime transference rate. The #44 bus line, which serves Lower Park Heights, also passes through here. Thirdly, the # 56 line, which is one of the longest lines, heading out through Pig Town and Baltimore Highlands on the South Side, and serving the City Jail, the Juvenile Detention Facility, and the Court House, ends in this neighborhood.
Furthermore, this area is part of a contiguous walk-through grid, which enables men on foot and youths on stolen bikes to traverse two-thirds of Baltimore at their leisure on long distance raids.
Reservoir Hill is a nightmare of failed gentrification in which upscale whites live side-by-side with mobs of welfare recipients. The neighborhood church has its back door gated, barred and pad locked! The #5 bus line, which connects Cedonia [an Eastside Ghetto] with Mondawmin [a Westside ghetto], winds ominously through the side streets in this ghetto outpost of West Baltimore. The real prime real estate is across North Avenue in Bolton Hill, where FaceBook posts report criminals from Reservoir Hill raiding across North Avenue as the main crime problem.
The upside is, from this vantage, on your yuppie roof deck, you will be able to see the Inner Harbor Fireworks twice per year and the next Mondawmin riots! It is criminal that any realtor would try to get a young family on a thirty year hook in this neighborhood. On one of the side streets I saw twenty blacks loitering in front of a vacant house which they use as a park during the day. There are even windows barred on the second story of some of these houses, not to mention the easy walk-through from the prime West Baltimore killing grounds and the fact that numerous large rentals catering to single black men dot the side streets of this former upscale urban paradise.
The basic problem with these assessments is that they are based on many of the same criteria that ghetto development is based on:
1. Easy access on foot
2. Accessible mass transit
3. Children, they advertise large numbers of children in middle class black areas as a plus, when middle class black youths currently commit most interracial violence!
It is obvious that these are property valuations, which will hold up well on the high dollar end but trap middle class people in the 100-250 K range in an expanding crime zone.
://livebaltimore.com/city-living-essentials/education-family/five-star-family-neighborhoods/
Mencken would have thrown up! Boosters reborn! A higher form of lying, as practiced by the real estate folks. One wonders if they can sleep nights.
As an aside, I just love these noveau trendy names the boosters have coined to disguise the neighborhoods I'd avoid, as would anyone with sense. Besides disguising the underlying gangrene, it makes it easier for PRAVDA to pinpoint the latest murders and robberies.In the "MIddle East". Now that I can agree with, it's like Bierut.
I grew up south of Reservoir whatever they're calling it. It went from a Jewish neighborhood to a ghetto fairly rapidly, from 1960 on. After the gummint razed the commercial district on North Ave. in the name of urban renewal, AKA slum relocation. That left them room to put up Stalinist head start buildings. offices for the ever expanding welfare bureaucracy, and clinics for the ills of their constituency. Oh, and a Browns supermarket.
Gosh, I always wondered why the middle class fled. Must be racism. Yeah, that's it.